


Like Roses Growing on a Windowsill

by RocketRabbits



Category: Afterlife With Archie, Archie Comics & Related Fandoms
Genre: Also: I don't know anything about Roses but im pretty sure this isn't how they grow, Decapitation, Flower metaphors, Gen, Heavily stylized, Major character death - Freeform, The blossoms are roses, Third Person POV, afterlife with archie characterization, artistic liscence: Botany, but again it's a flower metaphor theyre all flowers, cheryl-centric, does not contain references to incest - does contain references to Jason's possesiveness, not in detail or anything, so just content warnings all around here, third person present tense, uses the Blossom's dynamic fom AWA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 05:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8088823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocketRabbits/pseuds/RocketRabbits
Summary: Once stood a manor whose bricks were held together with vines that grew up the walls, so thick and full that they’d replaced the mortar. Roses once grew, but no longer, no more, save for two.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a summary of their relationship in Afterlife With Archie, except they're all flowers.

Once stood a manor whose bricks were held together with vines that grew up the walls, so thick and full that they’d replaced the mortar. Roses once grew, but no longer, no more, save for two.

Two roses grew side by side. It was surprising that they managed to grow at all, hidden away like they were, moving windowsill to windowsill in their extensive manor. What a wonder it was that they should receive any stable light. What a wonder it was that they should grow strong. Of course, roses grow on bushes. It shouldn’t be possible, by nature, for two to grow independently of the rest, but in a way they didn’t. They sprung from the same pack of seeds, after all, a bush of their own with no other buds.

Of course, it wasn’t for lack of trying. A woman in the manor tried for what little time she had, withering away her strength for the roses that grew side by side on the windowsills. She didn’t ever really get to see them be strong, but she shaped their thorns and colored their petals with her own blood. Just before the last of her red drained from her face, she turned to her husband and said:  
“Isn’t it beautiful that they should grow so steadily side by side?”

And it was. They learned to tangle their stems in a way so one’s thorns did not hurt the other, but together? They were a monstrosity. They were untouchable by their very nature with beauty impossible to tarnish.   
Upon his wife’s death, the husband took the roses off of their windowsill and took their planter to the garden. Two roses off of one bush, because everyone picks the prettiest, and they were most definitely the prettiest. At first one just clung tighter, unused to the world around her, tight enough that maybe for once her thorns pricked his skin, but the second rose said nothing, only noticed that more light only strengthened their red.

As they grew taller they spent time away from the garden and the windowsills, meeting new flowers who were never quite as beautiful as they. They met a lily with bright orange petals and tiny brown specks, not as dark as their red, but enough that they recognized him as someone they might know. They met an orchid, a daisy, a moonflower- some more desirable than others, none truly good enough to sit in their garden.

Sometimes, she wanted them to be.

She’d only seen his red for so long that she ached for a flower without thorns, especially when his dug so deeply into her skin. It had to have been on purpose, too; they had learned how not to stab the other when they grew so closely tangled together. Often, she wished she could stab him back, but he always knew when to pull away.

Once she met a ladybug that loved her and was loved in return, it was red and beautiful and was usually not befitting of roses but she loved having it near her, the only thing more permanent (or just as permanent) as he was. Once, her ladybug did not return, and he swore he hadn’t seen it, and she swore she saw a wing on one of his thorns. 

She started to feel a little whiter. Of course she was still red, beautiful and radiant and deep, but she felt the twinges of pink at her edges- then again, maybe it was just the brown of premature decay. She thought she might cut herself from the bush of two, maybe from the bush that grew every rose ever grown by light of this particular manor’s garden, but it would really be a shame to remove such red from the world, wouldn’t it? Especially when he wasn’t nearly red enough without her, neediness tainting his stem, willing to take her sunlight from her, willing to make himself grow stronger.

She tried to untangle their stems. His thorns, sharp and almost gleaming, beckoned her closer, so she did get closer. And with her own thorns, shaped by the same woman who shaped his, baptized in the blood of the woman that painted both of their petals, one tiny little thorn met the beautiful red head, and, in an instant, she was free.

One rose grows where once there were two and the windowsill does seem a little emptier for it, but the pink or rot or whatever it was no longer taints her edges, and she is redder than she’s ever been before.


End file.
